There was a time when only business people used to use desktop mail clients, and without any doubt Microsoft’s Outlook dominated that sector. But that is history now, a lot of general people, students use desktop mail clients, in fact those who have to check multiple email accounts everyday desktop mail clients are their best friend. Due to it’s increasing popularity obviously hundreds of desktop mail clients pops up in the market, but no one make an impact like Mozilla’s Thunderbird did. Mozilla’s Thunderbird simply take over the top spot among all other mail clients, due to its easy navigation, thousands of feature, built in spam protection and so much more.

Now Mozilla developer’s bringing Thunderbird 2 (next version of Thunderbird 1.5) to go one step further to reclaim the inbox :P. I.e total domination. If you already used TB 1.5 than you already love TB 2 by default. In TB 2 was not much extra ordinary changes, but have some very nasty yet sweet upgrades that will blow your mind. TB 2 maybe few weeks away from now but TB 2 RC1(Beta/Release candidate) is already available for download.

I downloaded and used this RC1 since the moment it was announced. It may not be yet ready for final release but still very stable (didn’t found any problem myself), considering maintaining my 7 e-mail accounts and daily 40-60 e-mail massages. So my own experience say its doing a great job, without causing any issue.

Upgrading is as easy as flipping a coin. The installer do the job for you, and keep all your e-mail settings, inbox,outbox,sentbox etc. intact as it was. For new installation, do i have to spell it out that, there is nothing. Ok so lets talk about features that rocks in Thunderbird 2 RC1-

• Enhanced Windows Vista Support- For those who already used or trying to use Thunderbird 1.5 under Vista, i don’t need to tell them about story of crashes and bugs. Well TB 2 RC1 fixes those bugs and increase compatibility.
• New Nullsoft Scriptable Install System, that’s right the type of installation used by Winamp and many others. By using that Mozilla claimed to resolve lots of outstanding issues regarding installation.
• Find as you Type- You should know by now, its an Ajax based search system, which will allow you to find messages & highlight at the same time you are typing query.
• New Mail alert notification- This will catch your eyes for sure. This notification list the massage preview text, subject and sender(U can change this from tools-options-general– notification) of newly received messages in the lower-right corner of your screen and automatically fade after a few seconds. This is useful as when i am working i will know whether i have to pay attention to the incoming mail or just leave it for later. A lot of people will find it useful.
• Message Tags- Tagging(actually it was Label) a e-mail massage is available in TB 1.5 but with limitation(5 tags only). But Thunderbird 2 RC1 just changes the story by bringing unlimited tagging, multiple tagging. Create your own tags for organizing email. Messages can be assigned any number of tags. Tags can be combined with saved searches and mail views to make it easier to organize email. Oh! did i say that you can search massage by tags also! Creating Tags and sorting mails onto it is just a right click away. You can even assign different colors to different Tags, which will transform the subject-line into that color. This whole tagging stuff just make your mail-management on the fly.
• Easy Access to Popular Web Mail Services: Sorry guys only those who use GMail and .Mac, type your username and Password..you are done. No need to worry about incoming/outgoing server….or anything else.
• Session History Navigation: Just like browser, now in your TB mailbox you can navigate backward, forward and navigate through message history.

There are few others less noticeable upgrades brought to Thunderbird 2, not to mention the visual style changed a bit to make the most use of window real-estate area. Thunderbird 2 RC1 is not yet a final public release, but still super stable and loaded with useful feature should make it a lot of people’s No. 1 mail-client.